Athletic Bilbao Career | Part 4 - First part of preseason

Ok, so as you remembered I arranged Brazilian tour, in order to make some profits, and of course to get players used in playing my tactic… Brazilian tour started I must say by surprising win against Atletico Mineiro 2:1, I say surprising because my players just started with their trainings, and their condition was about 70% max.

Brazilian Tour ~ Match Stats against Atletico Mineiro

As you can see Munian proved he is good poacher with 2 goals. I must admit that Atletico was better side, but as I said my players just get out there this is friendly, I am very pleased with first game. Susaeta and Herrera were assistants and defenders played very well, others did not prove much because many players played only first half due to very low condition rate..

Match Highlights ~ game against Atletico Mineiro

Second game was in 3 days, and I decided to sub most of the players so I played with “reserve” team. Corinthians was much better team and they litteraly destroyed me… At the end it was 1:0 but that was thanks to brilliant goalkeeper Iraizoz

Brazilian Tour ~ Match Stats against Corinthians

As I said I did not use no one from my first team except Iraizoz, and nobody proved to be worth my first team, so I will definitely look to forget this game quickly.

Brazilian Tour ~ Match Stats against Internacional

I used my best players, and they had decent game. Gonzalo Sorondo scored early goal for Internacional and Javi Martinez scored great goal for draw. I had decent possession of 45% but I plan to get it to the level of at least 60 against every opponent. Again defenders had great game, without any major mistakes, but still I did not make any cleat cut chance. Iraizoz is definitely proving he is the number 1 with 2 great saves on the opening of the second half. To sum up decent game, and I am pleased with the performance of my team.

Last game of the Brazilian tour was against Sao Paulo, and again disastrous performance from my combined team. I was lucky to draw 1:1 thanks to magnificent Iraizoz. I only hope he will stay in good form throughout whole season…

Brazilian Tour ~ Match Stats against Sao Paulo

They outplayed me at every segment of football game but I luckily did score from only chance I created through magnificent passing skill from Herrera, Lorente and Igor Martinez. To conclude my brazilian tour, I can be happy with performance of my defenders in general. My midfielders still can not control the game with high possesion, but in maybe 2 3 weeks with very high workload in match preparation based on teamwork I hope they will manage to complete my goal of 60% ball possesion in the game.

3 days have passed since I came back from Brazil so I it time to provide my home fans great entertainment against Juve. Great team to see where am I. Brazilians are not that good to be honest.

Match Stats ~ Home game against Juventus

20000 people came to see my boys, and I hope they weren’t disappointed because I weren’t. I did lose 1:0 when Vucinic scored at the middle of the first half, but I had my chances, unfortunately without Lorente,Muniain,Javi Martinez my star players, we did not manage to get ball behind Buffon’s back. Generally I am happy with the performance because Juve played with their best team while I rested my main stars.

Match Highlights ~ game against Juventus

Next as you probably remember I played against Cella and it was great performance from my team

Match Stats ~ Game against Cella at home

Nothing much to be said here, that’s top quality game as expected against low league team. I am very happy that finally Llorente and Toquero scored goals… My breaks were very dangerous. and morale is great after game like this. First part of my preseason was far from ideal. But it was good enough. Now I plan to give my players 1 week of rest from friendly fixtures and that I plan to play at least 4 5 more games against strong opponents to test my match preparation and morale…

Do you have any suggestions against whom I could play more friendly games….

About Author

Nemanja Spasenovski is a passionate FM player who enjoys writing articles about his careers. He is our Gold Star Contributor and co-author of FMBlog. Been playing CM/FM since 2000. Also a big supporter of Manchester United.